Dear Respondent,
This is a part of a research assignment commissioned by the Ministry of Finance, Government of India to understand the country wide scenario of higher education financing. As you would know that a large part of the population is under huge economic pressure and as such it becomes important to formulate policies that will assist students to pursue higher education of their choice, irrespective of their financial background. This is important not only for the individual but also for the growth and development of the country. There is also a pressing need for more financial resources to increase seats and improve infrastructure of the public colleges and institutes, to hire world class faculty etc. Coupled with this there is an increasing demand for the same resources from other parts of our growing economy like health and infrastructure.

Given this background, our effort is to understand the current scenario of financing higher education and suggest a better mechanism/policy/intervention that will not exclude a student just because her parents are poor or force a student to pursue management even if her interest lies in arts.

Kindly note that the questionnaire does NOT ask for your name, residential address or any other proximate details by which we may be able to identify you. We use Google Docs to conduct the online survey and as such their server does not even register you e-mail id. The data collected will be confidential and used only for academic research.

Hence, we would request you to kindly fill this survey and help us in our pursuit.

Regards,

Tridip Ray,
Associate Professor of Economics,
Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi
E-mail: tridip@isid.ac.in
Webpage: http://www.isid.ac.in/~tridip

and

Mausumi Das,
Associate Professor,
Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.
E-mail: mausumi@econdse.org
Webpage: http://econdse.org/mausumi/